Do any of arch-lockdowners regret it?

[Refractory]

Just that really.

I haven’t really been on MN since 2020 because I found the near complete support for lockdown far too upsetting.

the lockdowners in my life seem to not think about it much. For them, it’s just over.

with hindsight do you wish you’d been more sceptical?

would love a civil conversation about this.

We had a friend with severe PND that was not diagnosed and she ended up making a successful attempt on her life. She tried to get help. The GP basically said find an online support group because "Covid"

I rest my case. Next time, we’re doomed.

What are you going on about? It's got nothing to do with ego and everything to do with people having the ability to question things and not blindly follow along.

What lengths would they have gone to? When would they have said no, this is too far? They were desperate to grass up their neighbours, maybe they would have gladly pinned them down (in a hazmat suit of course) and vaccinated them against their will.

People were absolutely brainwashed and showed no sign of even considering whether what they were doing was even logical. I'm genuinely scared of the power they gave the government.

I was a care home manager during lockdown. My team and myself bust a gut following the rules, at huge detriment to both ourselves and in my view, at times, the people we were caring for. Some of the rules were logical and sensible. Masks. PPE, closing to regular visitors, fine. Some (making staff get changed before work outside, one by one, in a shed which we had to buy specially for the purpose for example) were ridiculous, didn't stop infection, and made life incredibly hard. Not letting loved ones in as a one off to say goodbye to their dying relatives was unusually cruel. It could have been managed, with good infection control, perfectly safely. It caused a great deal of distress all round. We didn't have a choice as I would have faced prosecution if I'd bent the rules, but I regret them being in place in the way they were. Especially when those in charge were, as it turned out, ignoring them, and even more so at the end when everything else was opening up, eating out to help out etc, and we were still under 'the rules', which by that point were rendered a bit pointless. I clearly remember the staff still having to sit 2 meters apart in full PPE to take lunch, then four of them meeting at a harvester for dinner after work, having to wear their masks to walk to the table but not whilst sitting at it. It just ceased to make sense.

@Beautiful3 I was very skeptical about masks. I thought they would be utterly ineffective as not used properly and false psychological reassurance.
I was wrong. This struck me whan going from Denmark (maskless) to Germany (mask wearing) where the masks were a reminder of vigilance. That masks are commonly worn during epidemics where epidemics are more common should have been an indicator.
How much of the effect was physical (a barrier to droplets) and how much was psychological I am not sure, It does not really matter.

Indeed,...the OP supposedly hasn't been on MN since 2020 but rocks up right before a GE apparently wanting to discuss lockdown restrictions. The posters on this forum get more bizarre by the day.

Multiple public and government officials said the vaccine would stop the spread.

This, spot on!

I don't regret it at all. I was made redundant from my job during Covid, but with a pandemic raging outside, deaths being reporting in the papers, staying at home seemed like a sensible option...

Maybe if I'd gone out to party, I wouldn't be here to type this today.

... then there were those NHS workers who got the covid bonus even though they were at home, shielding - because they 'couldn't be disadvantaged' - thus getting the same as those who actually went into work to help patients...

Again. I’m not talking about whether you spoke about shop staff. I’m saying that in that situation, there was absolutely no need to ignore the arrows (even if they seem like a pointless idea) because if you do, it just makes some poor person’s life difficult.

Nothing to do with being a lemming - just why would you make someone’s life more difficult just for the sake of it?

I obeyed the law. I didn’t follow all the guidance (one walk a day etc) or wash my shopping etc.

I think we inevitably got a lot wrong, in particular the lack of care given to children. Schools should never have closed (cue some pedant telling me they didn’t close-they were closed to most children). We’ll be dealing with the harm that follows that for decades.

@Singersong People alleging that scientists like myself were all far stupider than them because of a YouTube video and at the same time we were so super smart we had come up with a man-made virus that does not really exist are not brave questioning intellectuals. They are just upset that it is not about them.

People convinced that the people who worked in ICU full time were all making it up and also were in on it, and also far worse at their jobs that someone who watched some YouTube videos are not brave questioning intellectuals. They are just upset that it is not about them.

I pity anyone close to you.

Who’s life did I make difficult by walking around Tesco?

The cognitive dissonance is strong and most people who were prolockdown will want to feel their sacrifice was worth it and they are morally superior. I still find it weird to think no one is looking at the excess death data or the fact that fit healthy young people who were jabbed to help others are now themselves the medically vulnerable.

One day - perhaps in a generation or two - the world will scratch its head and wonder what the he'll went so badly wrong in society.

I was very lucky with the timings of lockdown, they didn’t negatively impact me that much. I am still generally in favour of them but I think the UK government handled them very badly. Lockdowns should have happened sooner, so they wouldn’t have been needed as long, and the rules shouldn’t have been so confusing with bubbles and all that crap.

The irony that NotAllowed does* *not see any link between her views and ego, while being proud of being obnoxious and self-important is impressive.

Yes, I am in Denmark and we saw it handled like you describe.
I think each Government went with their political dogma and they were lucky if that happened to fit.

I don’t regret the lockdowns. I can’t see what else you can do with a deadly virus with no treatment or vaccine.
People made great personal sacrifices to protect old vulnerable people. I don’t agree with them being rubbished as sheep or blind rule followers when it cost them such a lot.
I think the lessons learnt during covid about isolating, PPE, hospital management, vaccine development and delivery will all be very useful when a disease more like Ebola or Spanish flu, or the Plague comes along and we can swing straight into life saving measures.

March 2020 was necessary to some extent.

But in February 2020 I had a 6yo who loved parties, playing with friends, running around the playground with them etc.
By September 2021 she was angry and mistrustful... friends disappear.
And now... I have a 11yo, who doesn't really do friends, who still needs regular reassurance that schools won't close again.. who is finding out all the quiet spots at the Secondary school where she will be able to hide away. Because books are reliable, people aren't.

Lockdown, or in particular how it was implemented, had consequences.

@PuttingDownRoots Massively. It was an extreme measure to extreme circumstances and that it was left late meant it was more severe and less effective when it did happen.

I’m glad you posted op. I too found mumsnet really distressing during Covid. It revealed an underbelly of fascist snitches who operated out of a violent fear and were determined to curtail freedom without any good evidence to back this up. Really horrible